WINIFRED MARY BOSSEN, NEE BARTRAM 1910 - 2011 MEMORIES OF GRINDLEY AND UTTOXETER 1910 - 1949 INTRODUCTION I first got to know Mrs Winifred Bossen, nee Bartram in 1990 when at the age of eighty she had just researched, written and published a small book entitled “A Peep into the History of Hilderstone.” The book was a great success and Mrs Bossen was able to raise nearly £1,000 which she donated to NCH - The National Children’s Homes, a Methodist Charity founded to provide Children’s Homes for homeless children. It is now known as Action for Children and is concerned with the welfare of children in disadvantaged and vulnerable families. I first spoke to Mrs Bossen on the phone when she told me she was born in 1910 at Meadowhurst Farm, Grindley a mile from Grindley Station on the old Stafford Uttoxeter Railway line. Their nearest neighbour was 150 yards away and there were no other houses for another mile. At that time I was collecting people’s memories of the old railway line and Mrs Bossen promised to write down her childhood memories for me. Within what seemed a very short time she invited me to visit her at her home at Home Farm, Hilderstone where she presented me with a delightful hand-written account of her childhood at Grindley, her long walks along country lanes to school three miles away at Stowe by Chartley, the antics of her very eccentric head teacher, trips to Uttoxeter Market in a pony and trap, journeys on the old railway to Uttoxeter Girls’ High School and touching and sometimes amusing glimpses of a simpler world that is in sharp contrast to the world we live in today. As Mrs Bossen’s story covers more than just her memories of the Stafford Uttoxeter Railway line I thought it should be reproduced here in its own right. Jim Foley 2014 WINIFRED BOSSEN’S STORY Winifred Bossen on her 100th birthday August 7th 2010 Photo courtesy Mrs Ruth Smith, Winifred’s daughter. My name is Winifred Mary Bossen, nee Bartram. My father Enoch Bartram was a Methodist preacher. It was at the time he was conducting the services at Acton Gate Methodist Chapel, Stafford that he met my mother Louisa Mary Symcox whose family worshiped there. Mary, as she was called, was the eldest daughter of William Symcox of Gate Farm, Brocton, Stafford. Gate Farm stands at the entrance to Cannock Chase on the Stafford-Cannock Road. The road was later called Brocton Gate and may now have another name. My parents’ wedding which took place in November 1905 at Wesley Church, Stafford – now long gone - did not pass without a hitch. My father had made a special request of his bride-to-be – “Please don’t be late”. But my mother arrived very, very late, the wheel having come off the bridal carriage and as though that was not enough it arrived at Mother’s home at Gate Farm drawn by two black horses instead of the greys which she had ordered. Enoch Bartram Louisa Mary Bartram, nee Symcox The year 1910 was of some importance. It was the year George V came to the throne and more importantly for me it was the year that I was born. I arrived at Meadowhurst, Grindley near Uttoxeter on a beautiful Sunday morning on August 7th or so they told me. Trains have played quite a part in my life- even in my birth. The first train from Stafford to Uttoxeter used to arrive at Grindley Station at 9.20 a.m. I, too, arrived at 9.20 a.m. When the maid was allowed upstairs to see my mother and the baby she returned saying the things which women usually say about a baby – “Isn’t she lovely, isn’t she tiny and what a lot of dark hair she has”. “Yes”, said my dad jokingly, "she must have got it black as she came through the tunnel”. The girl made no reply but on her next visit to my mother’s bedroom she said, “Master says the baby got her head black coming through the tunnel. He must be wrong; the train had not reached the tunnel when she got off”. Was it innocence or what? My great grandfather Sampson Bartram was a blacksmith in Carter Street, Uttoxeter and also had some land in Vanity Lane opposite the cemetery gates there. I was told that my great grandfather had helped to lay the rails on the Stafford Uttoxeter Railway line. In 1879 my grandparents William and Hannah Bartram, nee Sturgess came to Meadowhurst Farm when they rented it from the estate of Lord Ferrers of Chartley Hall. The Derby Mercury Wednesday 5th November 1879 Meadowhurst, bounded on the eastern side by the River Blythe and on the west by the Drointon Road, consisted of a mixture of pasture, meadow and arable land over 104 acres. The farm also had its own orchard. A long drive led from the Drointon Road to the four bed-roomed farmhouse. Grindley Station, on the Stafford Uttoxeter branch of the Great Northern Railway, was about a mile away. The small market town of Uttoxeter lay five miles to the north. The village of Stowe by Chartley with the village school lay three miles to the south through the hamlet of Drointon. The County town of Stafford lay a further seven miles to the south. Bordered by the River Blythe any summer visitors to Meadowhurst were taken down the fields on a favourite walk along the river bank to enjoy the sights and sounds there – the large patch of water lilies with their huge green leaf pads and golden yellow incurving flowers dispersed between them, the odd kingfisher flying over the water, the large pike lurking in the water and the shallow spot where the cattle would stand cooling themselves. Cattle in the River Blythe near Grindley. Postcard courtesy Winifred Bossen In 1904 Chartley Estate was broken up and sold off. Mr Jewell, a builder from Caverswall, bought our farm and became my grandparents’ new landlord. It remained in his hands until he died at which time my brother William Sturgess, known as Sturgess, bought the farm. His son and grandsons are still there making it the fifth generation of Bartrams to live there. Our nearest neighbours were an old couple, Mr & Mrs Leadbetter, who lived a quarter of a mile up the hill from us towards Drointon and then it was a mile each way before there were any more houses. The meandering River Blythe near Blythe Bridge, Kingstone. The sign reads Private Fishing. Photo Jim Foley 1993 Details below of Meadowhurst Farm from the Chartley Castle Estates Sales Brochure 1904 courtesy Colin Deaville. Meadowhurst Farm in the 1960s. Photo courtesy Richard Bartram of Meadowhurst Farm, Sturgess’ grandson, Winifred’s great-nephew. Many times during the winter months the Blythe was in flood and the bottom fields looked like a lake. In my early childhood the road from Grindley to Blythe Bridge, Kingstone, and eventually Uttoxeter could only be reached by driving through the river as there was no bridge. Lower down the river was a wooden footbridge but there was no bridge for carts or traps. When the river was in flood people had to use the main Stafford Uttoxeter road which we always called the ‘top road’. One Wednesday morning – before I was born – my father was unable to go to Uttoxeter to the market. So my mother decided to go alone to do the week’s shopping. The river was in flood so she consulted Father about the advisability of going by the usual road by the ford at Blythe Bridge and Kingstone. He thought it would be quite safe so off she went. When she arrived in the middle of the river she began to get worried when she noticed water coming through the floor of the trap. To her consternation the trap started to sway from side to side, the wheels had left the bed of the river and the trap was actually floating. Fortunately, the horse continued on its way and pulled the trap and Mother safely to the other side. She said she had never been so frightened in her life. It goes without saying that she returned home by the ‘top road’ even though the river water would have gone down by that time. A bridge was built over the river in October 1914 and there is a plaque to this effect on one of the pillars. I was only four years old but I remember it well. The bridge over the River Blythe at Blythe Bridge, Kingstone, built in 1914 to replace the ford here. Winnie’s mother Louisa Bartram was nearly washed away while trying to cross the ford in her pony and trap circa 1911. Photo Jim Foley 1993 Another Wednesday Father and Mother were returning from Uttoxeter Market in the trap when they caught up with a woman they knew by sight and who they knew lived between Kingstone and the top of Blythe Bridge Bank. Father pulled up and offered her a lift. It turned out that earlier she had been on her way home with her husband on the horse and float when she had remembered that she had failed to buy a joint of meat. Instead of driving back to Uttoxeter her husband had made her get down from the float and return on foot. It soon became obvious that she had not only bought the joint but had oiled the way with a drink or two.